World of Warcraft – Page 8

Thank You For Not Competing

Perfect World Entertainment made news this week when they said that their plan with Neverwinter is not to compete with World of Warcraft. In an interview with Red Bull UK, Craig Zinkievich said that the goal was to “operate a fun game people like to play and want to come back to.” The developer believes that the box price and subscription model are no longer valid in most places, with the vast majority (86%) of gamers subscribing to only one MMO at a time, and fewer willing to subscribe to two. You can read the entire article here, where they talk about the free to play model and a couple other topics.

I almost feel bad for assuming that World of Warcraft’s consistently falling subscriber numbers would mark the end of developers trying to compete with it, but I suppose that years from now when World of Warcraft is a shadow of its former glory that the new benchmark for success will be the twelve million subscribers that the game peaked at. That said, I can’t help but give points to any developer willing to state that they are not looking to beat/compete with World of Warcraft. Why? Because at least I don’t have to worry about Neverwinter shutting down because it couldn’t meet the developer’s unrealistic expectations. Or Perfect World Entertainment labeling the game a failure, firing all of its developers, and stripping its funding to fix launch issues, subtle reference to Warhammer Online and several coughs.

The only thing that such a business model tells me as a video game writer is how willing the company is to cripple its own product during development and then shoot it in the head when it doesn’t pop out of the womb as an already accomplished millionaire. What better way to instill confidence in the press and your potential community than picking a goal that not a single other developer has managed to achieve, and measuring anything less as abject, irreconcilable failure? One can only sit and wonder why consumers don’t flock to spend sixty bucks and fifteen dollars a month on what is almost guaranteed to be a mediocre attempt at recreating a game they got sick of three years ago, launched with all of the grind and bugs of said product and no understanding of why it became so popular to begin with.

As a writer, I encourage developers to try and compete with World of Warcraft because the ensuing train wreck attracts leaves a lot of onlookers and that means more views for websites like MMO Fallout. As a gamer, however, I keep my money out of anything that so much as mentions competing with World of Warcraft, unless of course it is preceded by ‘we are not.’ So while Neverwinter may not be the perfect game, I have to give extra kudos to Perfect World for seeing World of Warcraft as a product to live with, not having the same reaction my dog has when he sees the vacuum cleaner running.

Also why is Red Bull better at getting MMO interviews than I am?

(Source: Red Bull UK)

World of Warcraft Down To 8.3 Million

Sound the alarms, prepare for the apocalypse, and call up your mother to tell her you never liked her cooking anyway, because World of Warcraft has announced a drop in subscriptions and that can only mean one thing: An apocalyptic flooding of the internet by the usual group of self-involved, cynicism spewing gamers that always pop out whenever news like this hits. Activision Blizzard has revealed that World of Warcraft lost 1.3 million subscribers last quarter, hitting 8.3 million at the end of March.

“While we have had a solid start to the year, we now believe that the risks and uncertainties in the back half of 2013 are more challenging than our earlier view, especially in the holiday quarter. The shift in release dates of competing products, the disappointing launch of the Wii U™, uncertainties regarding next-generation hardware, and subscriber declines in our World of Warcraft business all raise concerns, as do continued challenges in the global economy. For these reasons, we remain cautious. However, our focused and disciplined approach to our business has served us well in the past, and through continued investment and
careful management of our costs, we expect to continue delivering shareholder value over the long term as we have for the last 20 years.”
-Bobby Kotick

Blizzard released Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which ranked as the #1 PC game for the quarter. Black Ops II ranked #2 in overall dollars.

(Source: Activision Blizzard)

World of Warcraft Has "More Than 9.6 Million Subscribers"

You all know what February means, and I’m not talking about TERA going free to play. It’s quarterly report month! Activision has released their fourth quarter reports for 2012, and things are looking…toward the future. Net revenues for 2012 were up $500 million to $4.99 billion, with CEO Bobby Kotick describing the year as “the best performance in [Activision’s] history.” Skylanders, Activision’s toy-based game, has officially made its way into the billionaire’s club, selling over 100 million toys to the tune of $1 billion worldwide. Diablo III became the #1 best selling PC game with more than 12 million sales, while Mists of Pandaria took its place at #3.

World of Warcraft still retains its throne as #1 subscription MMO, dropping from the 10 million reported in Q3 2012, while still not dipping as low as the 9.1 million the quarter before.

As of December 31, 2012, Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with more than 9.6 million subscribers

Back in 2011, Blizzard announced a commitment to release more content at a faster pace, in order to combat the issue of players chewing through an expansion’s content and then unsubscribing out of lack of things to do.

(Source: Quarterly report)

World of Warcraft Has “More Than 9.6 Million Subscribers”

World of Warcraft still retains its throne as #1 subscription MMO, dropping from the 10 million reported in Q3 2012, while still not dipping as low as the 9.1 million the quarter before.

As of December 31, 2012, Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG, with more than 9.6 million subscribers

(Source: Quarterly report)

MMOrning Shots:

Fun fact: That is not my hand. Blizzard is still adamant that World of Warcraft may one day come to handheld iOS.

MMOrning Shots is a (mostly) daily article displaying random screenshots hidden in the MMO Fallout archives. If you would like your own screenshot featured in this article, send it to us via email at (mmofallout at gmail dot com)

Class Action Lawsuit Against Blizzard Over Account Security

Blizzard is on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit over the company’s account security. The lawsuit, filed against the Santa-Monica developer, states that Blizzard deceptively and unfairly charged customers for extra security devices (authenticators), pulling in $26 million while failing to provide adequate security for people who were not willing to pay an “undisclosed fee.” The lawsuit cites countless accounts that have been breached due to Blizzard’s inadequate security, and seeks to bar Blizzard from “tacking on undisclosed fees,” and from requiring users to sign up for Battle.net.

“Most recently, on or about May 19, 2012, reports proliferated that class members’ Battle.net accounts had suffered a security breach (‘hack’) at the hands of unknown parties (‘hackers’), and on or about August 4, 2012, hackers massively breached Battle.net’s security and acquired the private information of all of defendants’ customers in the United States, as well as the remainder of North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.”

Judging by how other class actions end up, players who purchased the authenticator can likely look forward to a $.50 credit coming to their Battle.net account somewhere between 2015-2016.

(Source: Courthouse News)

Blizzard Offers Charity To Hurricane Sandy Relief

Blizzard is my favorite company when it comes to charity. In 2009, Blizzard released the Pandaran Monk pet, raising $1.1 million for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2010, the Moonkin hatchling raised over $800 grand for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2011, the Cenarion Hatchling raised nearly $2 million in support of disaster relief following the tsunami in Japan. With the recent Hurricane Sandy that tore up the eastern coast of the United States, Blizzard has announced that a special Cinder Kitten pet will be released on the Blizzard Store.

The pet will cost $10 and 100% of proceeds will go toward the Red Cross relief effort.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

World of Warcraft Exploit Leads To City Massacre

In some MMOs, the idea of players being able to engage in PvP combat outside of designated areas can be horrifying. Someone gaining the ability to engage in combat where they shouldn’t could go on a rampage and make use of the full loot systems in games like RuneScape, and make the lives of many players miserable before they are eventually banned. In MMOs like World of Warcraft, the threat is slightly less present. Death is little more than a time setback, the penalty paid in a moderate fee to repair armor.

And speaking of World of Warcraft, everyone is dying. In the streets, in the houses, but mostly in the main cities. For several hours yesterday, on multiple servers, a kill exploit ran rampant through the major cities of Azeroth, with low level characters mowing down players and NPCs without a second thought. The exploit was hotfixed by Blizzard, and the perpetrators have presumably been banned. Eurogamer tracked down the source of the exploit, and found quite an interesting justification for the action:

“We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed,”

Now might be a good time to explain that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you are obligated to.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Monday Night Cap: Daily Questing

Welcome to your night cap, for Monday September seventeenth, star date two zero one two. Daily activities are a great way for MMOs to keep their communities interested and playing. From a design stand, it directs the more casual crowd to a list of chores that can be completed even if the person doesn’t have much time to play. They can also introduce players to certain features that they might not have found or tried on their own.

Take Guild Wars 2, for a recent example. Every day players are tasked with killing x number of mobs, x type of mobs, collecting x number of materials and completing events. With fast teleportation, the entire daily list can be completed in a half hour or less, and offers a nice reward for completion. By spacing out the events, players are essentially pushed into exploring the world.

Daily quests are especially nice in sandbox games, where the player might be overwhelmed by the vast number of choices of activities, but don’t have much in the way of guidance. RuneScape is introducing its own list of daily activities, to give the player a set of tasks to get them going, offering bonus experience for participating.

And yes, daily quest timers are also used to herd players and place artificial limits on content. Certain MMOs place timers on when you can raid dungeons, or how much experience you can obtain in one day (Final Fantasy). Some titles limit how many times you can pull a reward from a boss. This is a controversial, and well disputed issue among various communities.

A developer would tell you that the reason is wealth difference, and that they don’t want a player who can only raid once or twice a week to feel at a disadvantage to someone who has the time to raid ten times a night. The player’s side is that they pay the subscription (or whatever the model is) and therefore should be able to raid as much as they want. Another argument by the community is that MMOs are a time investment, therefore the players with more time should naturally have an advantage over those with less.

So dailies aren’t perfect, but they do aid people like myself who often quit MMOs not out of bad quality, but simply because they lose our attention. On the other hand, having dailies linked to multi-day events can result in an alienated player if for some reason they miss a day and have to start over.

How do you feel about dailies?

Blizzard: Will Not Up WoW’s Free Trial

World of Warcraft may still be at the top of the game, but if the past few years are any indication, it is a title that may be lost in the foreseeable future. Since it hit its peak just a couple of years ago, World of Warcraft has seen a substantial loss of players, down to the current level of approximately nine million. Still, this figure doesn’t appear to have frightened the top brass at Blizzard Entertainment.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Blizzard stated that the developer has no plans to increase the current free to play limit. Producer John Lagrave commented that there are special parts of the game that he would rather reserve for paying customers.

“We looked at whether Level 20 would give you a good sense of what our game is, and we think it does. We’ve definitely slid some of the pay-for features into the first 20 Levels,”

Sorry, gamers who for one reason or another are still holding out.

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